Medicine has (almost) always had a double face: that of scientific research and that of humanities. Finding a balance between these two aspects is the difficult task of any physician. Alessandro Liberati - Italian physician and researcher - embodied this union in himself, leaving a lesson on how it is possible to live the physician's mission coherently without neglecting one or the other aspect: reason and passion, scientificity and attention to real needs, and to the patient's freedom. And it is precisely patient associations, with the support of the community, that should be in a strong position to ask for a redefinition of the scientific research agenda.